Common Ground
by Sharma Wild
Summary: The balance between Rose and the Doctor has somewhat been restored, but for how long? Desire is a thing not easily denied, as the Doctor finds out… Sequel to Deciphered


Doctor Who Common Ground

The Doctor had been right. Things hadn't changed between them, not really.

After a couple of weeks of awkward moments and tense silences things were almost back to normal again. That innocent way in which they had used to touch each other was still gone, but at least the grins were back.

Rose was both relieved and disappointed. She was walking through one of the corridors that lead through the TARDIS. The Doctor had once told her that the ship got inside peoples' minds, and she couldn't help but to wonder what it made of her jumbled thoughts, of the feelings that she still harboured, though kept secret, kept safe.

Did the time-machine laugh at her? Did it pity her? But somehow, Rose sensed that it wasn't so. The TARDIS simply hummed and dreamed its own private dreams. It didn't see her as a rival, if anything it had welcomed her presence. TARDIS loved the Doctor and it didn't want him to be alone.

Rose stopped her musings as she entered the control room.

The Doctor, completely absorbed by the consoles and the switches and the buttons that controlled the TARDIS, didn't hear her. She stopped just inside the door, a glimpse like this, when he wasn't aware that she was looking, was something rare. She watched as he moved around the controls with breathtaking ease and that swaggering grace that made her heart skip a beat.

Then the TARDIS shook like an old car hitting potholes. Rose gave a surprised scream of pain when she fell and hit her knee hard on the metal walkway.

The Doctor looked up from the controls. "Are you alright?" he asked, a worried frown on his face.

"Yeah", she replied and got back up on her feet, grimacing as she put her weight on the aching knee.

"Come here and let me take a look at it." He reached out a hand and she took it, allowing him to help her limp over to one of the seats by the consoles. He knelt in front of her and slid her striped over-knee stocking down so that he could examine the bruised joint.

The sensation of his warm fingers against her skin made Rose shiver. The weeks of carefully restoring their relationship, of re-establishing the balance between them, vanished as his fingers caressed over the grazed skin, and she was back in his arms, their bodies grinding together, their lips meeting in a kiss so passionate that even now the memory of it send a tingle through her.

The Doctor, having felt the girl tremble, looked up. "Does it hurt much?" He asked.

Rose was about to shake her head but instead she nodded and put on her most pouty, her most girlish face. "I think it's broken", she complained.

"It's just bruised", the Doctor said with a little chuckle at her antics. "You'll be fine in a day or two."

"But it hurts too much", Rose whined. "Can't you kiss it better?"

It was an innocent request, and a thing he wouldn't have thought twice before doing before the kiss, before desire had entered their relationship and made things complicated. Perhaps she missed that natural way in which they had used to touch each other as much as he did?

Wanting only to comfort, to go back to a time when everything between them had been simple and clear, the Doctor leaned in and brushed his lips over her knee.

Rose's breath caught in her chest and her heart raced. She struggled not to reach out and caress her fingers over his short-cropped hair, over his face that seemed to be all sharp angles and planes in the green light coming from the consoles.

"Better?" The Doctor asked, looking up, and she could only nod. "Good." He rose and moved back to the controls, leaving Rose to pull up her stocking. His lips burned with the feeling of her naked skin, his nostrils were filled with her warm scent.

He felt dizzy and foolish. She shouldn't have this effect on him; he should be able to keep his emotions under control. But somehow Rose always managed to breech his carefully constructed walls and trip through his wires.

She didn't know how close it had been, how hard it had been for him to pull back that night he had had her in his arms, her long legs wrapped around his waist, her fingers raking over his chest.

The memory was enough to make his body react. He leaned against the console, not wanting Rose to see what condition he was in, and only managed to make it worse. The TARDIS hummed against the length of his rigid flesh and he had to bite back a moan.

The memory of her, of her body pressed against his overwhelmed him…

_The delicious friction as she moved against him was slowly driving him mad. Her hands grabbed at his leather jacket, tugging at it..___

_"Take it off", she whispered. "I want to touch you… Please, I need to…"___

_He shrugged it off his shoulders and she pushed it down his arms, trapping them in the jacket's sleeves. The cheeky smile that played over her full lips when she realised that he was trapped incensed him to no end. And when she grabbed his tee shirt and ripped it apart he had to struggle to not be undone by the way her eyes graced over him, by how she trembled against him.___

_"Oh, Doctor…" Her breath tickled his throat, teased his already heightened senses. Her exploring mouth threatened to shatter the last of his self-control. Her fingers that teased their way down his chest were like delicious torture, and then she reached the zipper of his jeans…___

_He had pushed her away, had been the one to bring them back to the reality of it, but now, in his mind, he played out the scene as it could have happened.___

_… Rose deftly slid her fingers inside his jeans driving a shudder from him as he pressed up against her hand, yearning for more of her touches. His own hands caressed their way down from her breasts to her pink cotton pyjama pants, touching the core of her pleasure through the thin fabric, savouring the moan that fell from her lips just before he captured them and stole her breath with a passionate kiss.___

_They moved in unison to a rhythm older than time it self until they both trembled and shuddered, balancing on the edge of the universe, praying to fall.___

_In his mind's eye, the Doctor watched as Rose's eyes fluttered close, as she threw her head back and cried out as his skilled fingers pushed her over the edge. His name fell from her lips like a chant.___

_"Doctor… Oh, Doctor…"_

"Doctor?"

It took him awhile to realise that the voice was not part of his fantasies. He looked up from the screen he had been staring emptily at. "Yes?" He asked, not turning around, not wanting Rose to notice the yearning that no doubt showed in his eyes.

"Where are we going?" She asked, frowning a little at how tense the Time Lord suddenly seemed. She wondered what he had been thinking of. He had been so wrapped up in the thoughts that she had had to call his name twice before he reacted. "Are you alright?"

"I'm perfectly fine", he said, giving her a quick grin over his shoulder before turning back to the controls. "And we're going to 18th century France."

"Did you wake up with a craving for silk-stockings, lace and velvet again?" Rose teased, and once again, for a moment, things were back to normal between them.

"Something like that", the Doctor replied, concentrating on the TARDIS' controls. "Hold on tight", he said. "This will be a bumpy ride."

Rose had to smirk at his choice of words. "Oh, it already is", she mumbled under her breath.


End file.
